I don't see a problem with the sperm crisis (though in reading the article it seems all of the test subject were in one European country, so I'm not totally sold on the "crisis" part of the sperm crisis)

My point was that1) Not solving a medical issue because overall we like the end results for our population count, seems rather hypocritical given the other medical issues we work to solve that lead to the same results.2) If we are going to look at the over all end results (in regards to over population or other societal issues) when deciding what medical issue to address, where do we draw the line?

Modern medicine is probably one of the leading factors (outside of the simple mathematical issue of more people having sex every generation) in our current population explosion. Suddenly deciding we've found that one problem that we shouldn't fix seems rather arrogant, not to mention a bit too late.

Francis Di Domizio wrote:Let me clarify since you still aren't anywhere close

I don't see a problem with the sperm crisis (though in reading the article it seems all of the test subject were in one European country, so I'm not totally sold on the "crisis" part of the sperm crisis)

My point was that1) Not solving a medical issue because overall we like the end results for our population count, seems rather hypocritical given the other medical issues we work to solve that lead to the same results.2) If we are going to look at the over all end results (in regards to over population or other societal issues) when deciding what medical issue to address, where do we draw the line?

Modern medicine is probably one of the leading factors (outside of the simple mathematical issue of more people having sex every generation) in our current population explosion. Suddenly deciding we've found that one problem that we shouldn't fix seems rather arrogant, not to mention a bit too late.

rabble wrote:Why? Who's doing the snipping this time? Who's forcing us to have low sperm counts?

I said "kinda reminds me", not "is exactly the same as". The similarity is not in the phenomenon itself, but the reactions to it. Compare:

A: Our world will be a better place if people have fewer babies.B: Our world will be a better place if ethnic minorities have fewer babies.

Since the data is hardly complete on the sperm-count crisis, it's a strong possibility that we'll discover that sperm-count reductions have not been distributed uniformly across racial and socioeconomic categories (because when is anything ever distributed equally across racial and socioeconomic categories?). Will you still be supportive of this phenomenon as a "good thing" if it disparately affects the poor? This would make Statement A approach Statement B in practice. And who's to say we're not "forcing" this to happen to anyone? What will your opinion be if the sperm-count crisis turns out to be the result of pollution, chemicals in processed food, or psychological stresses due to economic inequality?

I think the proper normative response (i.e. what should happen) to this sperm-count thing is to remain neutral until more data becomes available.